Canon

When photographers I know talk about processing their digital images, they generally talk about Adobe products like Photoshop or Light Room. Some talk about Apple’s Aperture. Operating system only matters when it manages to make filters finish faster on the equivalent hardware.

But… I am cheap. Photoshop was in my tool set back when work paid for me to do web design. Aperture and Light Room never entered it.

So I used Picasa as it did what I needed. Occasionally I used GIMP to perform more advanced edits. For example, I desaturated a custom area in the picture on the right to bring the attention back to who is important. Picasa can only do the same for a circle.

Considering GIMP is a image editor, it seemed quite concerning that it would fail to open Raw images. Surely Canon CR2 files from a 4 year old camera are supportable? Well, it turns out, GIMP needs help from a plugin.

A dcraw-gimp plugin based on dcraw has very simple options for profiles used convert Raw to Portable Any Map for opening in GIMP.

A ufraw-gimp plugin based on ufraw has much more cool tools for adjusting the levels prior to converting to Portable Any Map.

This morning I worked with F-Spot as my image manager and GIMP as the editor. This afternoon I switched to digiKam for the image manager and switched only to GIMP for things I could not manage.

Yesterday was another Athens, GA Strobists meet. Like the previous meets, there was lots of talk about camera capabilities, radio trigger capabilities, working the camera within the flash synchronization speed, etc.

I did stand in for some shots while we waited on actual models to show up. I think I’ll stick to behind the camera.

Caught this one when Katie’s friend, Sara, said something to make Katie laugh.

As this was mostly at night, my Canon wasn’t focusing, so I shot in manual. While the light was right, most were out of focus. Suggestions?

For about eight months I have participated in a group called the Brunch Bunch here in Athens. We get together to eat and talk. Many conversations drift into the nerdy (my forté?). The locations vary so I have gotten to try new (to me) restaurants. Elizabeth (pictured right) vouched that I am a great guy. Well, these are great people.
🙂

Elizabeth also brought a friend of hers from out of town, Claudia. Claudia, smartly has a newer version of my Canon Rebel. I have the XT. She has the XSi (two models newer). The newest is the T1i.

Downtown Athens is a great place to shoot photos. So, we walked around for an hour or so looking in stores to get out of the heat. This is the hat Elizabeth bought from Helix who also had some cool stone candle holders. Native American Gallery had some interesting petroglyph jewelry and gray flower pottery. I’ve got some ideas for gifts to give for upcoming birthdays, holidays, etc.

One of the employees at Helix and Claudia both asked if I had a blog. I’m sure it was because of my shirt! I only admitted to this one and blogging about Blackboard. Though, I guess I have diversified somewhat here. I probably should blog more about local stuff as well. That would mean getting out more as well.

For years, I have been collecting teeshirts from thinkgeek.com. At present the collection consists of:

CPR/AED training requires time on the floor rescuing dummies. Objects in pockets, like my Digital Elph, interfere with rescuing dummies. Digital cameras on desks without supervision have a tendency to disappear. (Not so much from coworkers kleptomania but from my distractions.) So I put it in my work backpack.

Today is the First Day of Ridvan. So earlyish this morning I went down to the Botanical Garden since I wasn’t going to be at work and didn’t go this past weekend. I spent ten minutes looking for the Elph in the work backpack. So I went and just shot with the Rebel. I chalked it up to having left the camera at work. After all, the last place I recalled seeing the thing was at work.

I decided to look at what I took. So I looked for the card reader in the main part of the camera backpack. To my surprise, the Elph was right there in the wrong backpack. The only thing that makes sense is I moved the camera but forgot I did so.

Perhaps better brain food could help? Fish providing omega-3 fatty acids is already a healthy part of my diet. Maybe more eggs with choline with the vitamin B precursor could help?

This digital point and click camera does well for every day use. In the winter, it fits in my coat pockets very easily. In the summer, it fits in my cargo or carpenter shorts’ pockets. I have it so often, others expect me to have and are disappointed the few times I fail to have it on my person.

I do have a great backpack for my Canon Rebel XT which also carries my work laptop. For periods, I do use it. Maybe the strap on the other backpack breaking is a sign?

Basically, the upload form said files were limited to 100MB. That’s like 1 minute for the default settings of my Canon Elph (640×480 @ 60 fps). So I end up not having to use longer videos I shot. Until I found Google Video had a downloadable tool to push larger than 100MB. Google doesn’t aggregate all my videos onto a single page. Nor can I import them to other sites. Arggh.

So I thought the free video editing might be the approach. I guess I need to go Linux or Mac to edit video. Windows Media Maker is solely a tool to place clips and transitions into a single video. WTF?

Finally I noticed last night “Upload files larger than 100MB or upload many files at once!” and clicked the button. Yay! I was able to push 12 videos all at once. So it was a non-intuitive interface which made Youtube seem unable to do it.